


John: Accept Invitation

by TTMIYH



Series: John: Grow Increasingly Involved With Kink [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, BDSM, Consensual Kink, F/F, F/M, Gen, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Porn With Plot, Slice of Life, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-11-01 21:11:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: "So your genius plan to make me less depressed, which, by the way, I am not!" John said, as Rose let out an almost derisive puff of air, something like an "Ugh", "Is to take me to a sex club and fuck a bunch of strangers?""Fuck? Goddess, no, that would be ludicrous. Hopefully you will not be having any sex, because that's against the club rules - except on special occasions." She responded, reciting the last half of her sentence like she was quoting a rulebook. "No, my dear, sweet Egbert. I'm taking you to akinkparty.""A what?"





	1. An Intervention

**Author's Note:**

> This was written partially out of my desire for wholesome kink and partially out of my desire to put John Egbert in a variety of sexual situations and also make him happy because he deserves it. Please enjoy.
> 
> Disclaimer: Kink is not a substitute for therapy. It is very fun for the right people but if you are depressed, please get help: from a professional, if possible!

John Egbert lived simply, in a studio apartment with a bed on the floor and a little kitchenette, and he used a hot plate supercharged by his smart friend Jade to cook his food and occasionally burn his fingers. Fresh out of technical school, his CompTia A+ certification apparently didn't mean much, but working as a corporate helpdesk boy was better than working as nothing and he made enough money to get a couple of luxuries when he needed to, which wasn't often. He still indulged himself in video games, but it never felt the same as it did when he was 13. His internet friends split up after their MMO of choice and IRC client of choice both shut down, and then got back together when they discovered that they all had moved to the same city, for one reason or another.

But it was still never the same. John didn't have a therapist, but he was pretty sure he was depressed. He woke up, grabbed a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts, and went to work. He got home, ate dinner, practiced magic tricks in front of a mirror, sometimes played video games, went to sleep. On the weekends, he slept in. Not because he stayed up late and got tired, but because he didn't have anything better to do. He remained in his boxers and ate all his meals on the floor because he was feeling lazy, and sometimes he turned on his small TV and watched the news, always kind of sad that G4 stopped being a thing.

Once or twice a month, he guesstimated, he'd hang out with someone. Usually Dave. Sometimes Jade, and on occasion, Rose.

Today, it was Rose.

"So, John," She said, whipping his ass in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate at the same time. John had always a crush on Rose and never could admit it, but they both knew. Rose never expressed interest, although, if she did, John figured occasionally, it wasn't like he would notice. One of his defining character traits was his general obliviousness, such as losing the rest of his stocks while he stared at the small laminated placard she had handed to him.

"Red Miles Sex Club", on one side, a pitch black, starry border encased in lace-like red veins. On the other side, the same border containing a long, narrow bar code. It was about the size of a playing card, all told. Above the bar code, he noticed in small, white, ornate font "John Egbert". "Rose, is this some kind of prank?" John asked. He flipped it back and forth, staring at the shiny card, his ears turning bright red. Why was his heart pounding so hard?

"No, it's therapy. I'm getting you out of the house." She stated, simply and declaratively. Her voice made it evident that, in her eyes, the decision was final. But still, John protested. "I went ahead and asked the proprietor of the club to get you a card printed since she owed me a favor. So, for the rest of the year, you'll have platinum membership, on her."

John looked at his calendar. It was February.

Hoo boy.

"But, uh... I had plans... this evening?" John stammered out, eliciting a roll of Rose's eyes.

"Firstly, I never said we were going tonight, but secondly, it's a Saturday, Egbert. No, you didn't." Rose snarked, her face curling up into an expression of both concern and frustration. "And, while we're on the topic, yes, we are going tonight. First Saturday of every month. My personal theory is that you are depressed because you lack the constant stimulation and excitement that childhood brought, where every day was a new tumultuous adventure for you to throw yourself into headlong, your interests were still fresh, and even school was teaching something different each day. But now you fix the electronic mail systems of geriatric CEOs and wallow under your comforter every Saturday and Sunday until you return to the job for the rest of the week. As I said, I'm getting you out of the house."

"So your genius plan to make me less depressed, which, by the way, I am not!" John said, as Rose let out an almost derisive puff of air, something like an "Ugh", "Is to take me to a sex club and fuck a bunch of strangers?"

" _Fuck_? Goddess, no, that would be ludicrous. Hopefully you will not be having any sex, because that's against the club rules - except on special occasions." She responded, reciting the last half of her sentence like she was quoting a rulebook. "No, my dear, sweet Egbert. I'm taking you to a _kink_ party."

"A what?"

And Rose proceeded to explain to him, in exhaustive yet somehow limited detail, the difference between a "sex party" and a "kink party".

She'd see him at 8, they decided. Her place. For tea, and then splitting the Lyft.


	2. Best Friend

ectoBiologist [EB]  began pestering  turntechGodhead [TG]  
TG: so whats todays beef   
EB: dude! you're not allowed to start responding to me before i say anything! that's, like, against the rules!   
TG: oh whoops my bad   
TG: i just so happened to be on pesterchum as you poked me and my catninja-like reflexes allowed me to outspeed you like a shuckle in trick room   
EB: well, uh... dont do that again?   
TG: john im sorry if my amazing speed is too much for you but you know that i cant control this shit  
TG: its not something you can just put a cap on  
TG: i see a window pop up and my fingers are moving before my brain even does  
TG: this is my curse john maybe show some fucking compassion  
EB: fine! anyway, i need your help!  
TG: i told you i cant hand out blowjobs for free anymore  
TG: ive given you maybe thirty freebies and i gotta pay my rent   
EB: dave! this is serious! serious time!  
TG: alright go  
ectoBiologist [EB]  is now an idle chum!  
EB: rose is taking me to this weird kink party!  
TG: oh finally  
EB: what?  
TG: red miles right?  
EB: what????????  
TG: dude dont make me start quoting pulp fiction at you  
TG: we all know my advanced-level boner for anything quentin tarantino makes is far above even his own boner for feet and abusing women but thats a level i dont want to stoop to  
TG: yeah rose has been planning this for like four months dude  
TG: thats where she met kanaya so im sure shit will turn out fine for you  
EB: who's kanaya?  
TG: oh  
TG: oh my god  
TG: oh my good christian baby jesus youre serious arent you  
EB: who's kanaya!? don't just bring someone up like that and then not tell me who you're talking about!  
TG: you know  
TG: kanaya  
TG: roses girlfriend  
ectoBiologist [EB]  is now an idle chum!  
TG: john cmon  
TG: you had to know that baby crush for high schoolers wasnt gonna actually work out right?  
TG: please tell me   
TG: your best bro in the entire universe   
TG: that you didnt actually think rose was asking you out on some weird date   
TG: shes been dating kanaya for a year dude what stack of mountains have you been living under  
EB: i don't want to go anymore  
TG: john you lump of protoplasm  
TG: just remember what the guy from high school taught you  
TG: deep breaths  
TG: count prime numbers  
TG: no anxiety attacks allowed this is big daves fun-only zone  
TG: population you and you not hyperventilating all the way to the hospital  
TG: take a minute man  
ectoBiologist [EB]  is now an idle chum!  
EB: alright.  
TG: you good dude?  
EB: yeah, i think so.  
TG: nobodys gonna blame you if you dont wanna go  
EB: but i do want to go, i think. it sounded... fun, i guess.  
EB: its just a lot to take in all of a sudden.  
TG: yeah no i feel that  
TG: its not a for everyone sort of deal  
TG: pretty much the opposite actually  
TG: not to make it sound high-brow or anything like were whipping dudes with gold leaf  
TG: sipping on champagne while wearing real parisian man-leather  
TG: i mean some of them are like that but who am i to judge?  
TG: anyway the point is rose thinks youll have fun and shes been blabbing to me about this for months  
TG: "Oh I have to get John out of the house, he's so sad all the time it makes me angry!"  
TG: im just gonna observe the aftermath like a movie scientist as i usually do  
TG: standing in the background scribbling something on the clipboard just in time to notice the cages are open  
TG: whoops too late to avoid this chitinous whirlwind clusterfuck  
TG: bye bye redshirt  
EB: if it doesn't turn out well can i head to your place?  
TG: duh  
TG: bro is never around and his couch is always open  
TG: ill even find the worst reviewed nic cage movie on netflix to blow your mind with  
EB: sounds good. is there a dress code or anything?  
TG: god how did rose not tell you these things already  
TG: harlot lalonde  
TG: anyway no there's not a dress code except keep it street legal when youre not indoors  
TG: but im gonna tell you what to wear anyway  
TG: get on a button down  
TG: plaid  
TG: trust me and roll up the sleeves  
TG: and john  
EB: yeah?  
TG: nobody can force you to do anything  
TG: and if they try to let rose know   
TG: or let me know and ill let rose know  
TG: shes friends with the owner  
TG: but this is a just in case sort of thing since i dont think itll go bad  
TG: and if you dont wanna go you still dont have to  
TG: nobodys gonna be mad  
EB: are you sure?  
TG: rose is weird not evil  
EB: yeah, i guess.  
ectoBiologist [EB]  is now an idle chum!  
EB: alright, i'm gonna go!  
TG: cool  
TG: have fun dude  


ectoBiologist [EB] stopped pestering  turntechGodhead [TG]


	3. Meeting Kanaya

Plaid. Sleeves rolled up. John looked okay. He took a shower and brushed his hair in a way he thought was right, even putting a little gel in it, the stuff he hated so much. No cologne to use, but deodorant was a necessity. Khakis - with a belt? No belt. No! Wait! Belts are useful tools. He took the belt, and a deck of cards.

He didn't consider himself anything to write home about. With no parent to moderate his intake of food, he had gained weight from junk, but with nobody to moderate his intake of food, he lost weight from not eating. Somewhere underneath his wide shoulders, broad frame, and somewhat flabby arms was a layer of muscle, waiting to be brought to the surface, but when he flexed it was just a squishy arm lump. He wasn't out of shape, but he wasn't in great shape. Skin? Pale. Hair? Black, kind of messy. Glasses? Obviously.

Rose had to text him her address because he realized he had never been to her place before. His intimidation factor only grew when he noticed that he was heading into the expensive part of the city, where the hipsters tended to live, far away from John and Dave's less affluent chunk of change. This was near where he worked, but he didn't make nearly enough to afford any of the apartments here, which is why he was so used to public transport. From the bus stop, it was still two blocks to a building that seemed to be like a temple when he stepped in, with ornate marble statues and pillars, a gleaming, tiled floor, and a doorman blocking him from walking any further. A kindly old man that, somehow, John knew could put him in a headlock, so he turned around, walked out, and then turned around, and walked back in.

"I'm here to see, uh, Rose Lalonde? In room 30A?" John asked, meekly, his voice coming out in tired squeaks. He forgot to bring a jacket, and it was cold as shit outside. 

"You must be John. Welcome." The man replied, removing himself from John's path and opening the elevator for him. Mirror-lined and coated in shiny metal, the contents of the elevator were probably worth more than John's entire net worth. He pressed the button for Floor 30, stepped away, and gave John a kindly old smile and wave. When the door shut, he started sweating harder. Floor  _30_? He thought it she was on floor 3, room... 0A... Or something.

No, it didn't really make sense. When the elevator door opened, John stumbled directly into a minuscule hallway leading to a door. He grabbed the knocker in the lion's mouth and gave it a couple of raps, hearing an unfamiliar voice. "One minute, please!"

John stared at his wrists. He thought for a second he was trying to look at a watch, but then he realized that he didn't wear watches.

When the door open, he was immediately struck with the... Natural beauty was the only word that came to mind, of the woman in front of him. No makeup, with tired little bags under her eyes, and pale tan skin. She was, without a doubt, taller than John by about a foot. Her face was narrow and slender, shoulder-length hair brushed back, and her almost emaciated figure mostly hidden by a jade green sweater and dark black sweatpants. The only thing about her that didn't put John at ease were her nails: fancy, pointed, and green. She immediately pulled him into a hug, and John was more confused than ever.

"Oh! You must be John. Rose is still getting her makeup on." She said, gently patting his back and shutting the door behind him. She grabbed his hand with hers and he felt the juxtaposition immediately, with her cold, somewhat bony fingers curled around his shorter, warmer ones. She gave it a shake, and John knew how to respond to that. "Um, if you want, later, I can tailor that for you a little bit better. Your shirt, I mean. It's a little..." The woman said, making some kind of inscrutable hand motion, and a kind of sympathetically disgusted face.

"I'll, uh, think about it," John responded, looking around for a table. It really was like a miniature house more than an apartment, dressed to the nines with artwork, most of which was impossible to make heads or tails of. It was sort of like a four leaf clover, with a small main area that he had just walked into, and then walls splitting it into four corners, each one a different room but all connected without doors. From where he stood, top right was a kitchen, bottom right looked to be an office, bottom left, a television room with a sofa, top left, a dining room. In between the top left and bottom left little chunks, there was another hallway with a shut door, presumably leading to a bedroom, since John couldn't really see Rose where he was. 

"My apologies for the, um, spontaneous hug." The other woman said, somewhat worriedly. John didn't see an issue with it at all so he gave her a somewhat dopey thumbs up.

"You're fine. I'd ask where to hang up my jacket, but, uh, I forgot to bring one." John replied as the woman silently ushered him to the dining room. A rectangular table was folded up and stored against the biggest wall, while a thin, metal, circular table stood there in the center, with a full set of tea-consumption equipment ready for use. Two seats. The material on the top of the table, not one he recognized by sight, was white, with fanciful floral patterns seemingly painted into it. Porcelain? John shrugged internally. He didn't know how fancy tables were made.

"Oh, I can bring you one of Rose's, although it probably won't be a perfect fit. Do you have a tea preference?" She asked, so kind and sweet. Even as nervous as he was, John felt calm. Like he was about to be taken care of, it felt. 

"I don't, uh, drink tea... very often." He responded, being gently urged into one of the seats.

"Lavender it is." She replied, and disappeared behind John. John twiddled his thumbs, whistling idly, hearing a kettle begin to boil at the same time as a door opened. He was torn between which of the two steps of footsteps to turn towards, but then his attention was grabbed by the thing closer in his peripheral.

"I'm glad you came. Really, honestly, and as sincerely as humanly possible." Rose said, showing off a full-toothed smile. John had realized that he had never seen one of those out of her before. Rose wasn't as tall as the other woman, but she was still an inch taller than John (which wasn't hard when you were 5'4"). She was mostly leg, and somewhat plump, most of herself concentrated below the waist. John had never seen her in a dress before, so the bright citrus orange-and-yellow attire she wore was something new to him, and if he had more self-confidence, he would've complimented her on it, and how good it looked even with her somewhat incongruous dark black makeup, emphasized with touches of orange. A blue hairband was clasped over her hair as it fanned out from the top of her head, framing everything else in platinum white-blonde. "I'd imagine Kanaya had introduced herself - "

"Oh! That's Kanaya! I mean... I thought it was Kanaya. But it could've just been a friend or something. I don't know!" John immediately blurted out, regretting it when she saw a narrow, almost dangerous seeming squint in the direction of the kitchen. But then, Rose's face returned to its typical demeanor. Neutral, with a hint of happiness.

"Indeed, Dave had told me that you were surprised by the revelation that I was romantically involved with someone," Rose said, with a wry smirk as Kanaya entered with a teapot held in hand, stark white, like most of their other decorations. "Also, I'd like to formally submit an apology for the garish decor. My mother insisted that only the best condominiums in town would be allowed to house me, and then proceeded to enforce said arbitrary rule." She said, Kanaya bowing at her waist to pour John and Rose each a cup of hot tea. John sort of noticed that Kanaya wasn't looking at him, or Rose, but at the floor, and her face was flushed bright red, but it left his mind when she turned around, Rose-ward and then in a complete circle, and stiffly marched out. 

"Um, is something wrong?" John asked, voice low. He started whispering, actually. "Did I interrupt an argument or something?"

Rose burst out laughing, putting her teacup and saucer down on the table after having almost lifted it to her face. "No, John, you haven't interrupted anything. Kanaya and I have our little games that we play, from time to time. I won't bore you with the lurid details, but suffice to say, she had broken a rule."

"Oh! Okay. I think I get it." he said, not getting it at all.

"Mm." Rose responded, dryly, her makeup remaining immaculate even as she sipped her tea thoughtfully. John felt it appropriate to join her, but when it tasted kind of funky, he reached for the small little dish piled with sugar cubes. Rose raised an eyebrow at him, in a what-do-you-think-you're-doing-Mr.-Egbert way, with an expression that he didn't think he ever saw on her before. Two in one night. It made him stop in his tracks, freezing his arm mid-air before her lips pursed into another little smile and she pressed a tiny little pair of tongs into his hand. He grabbed a sugar cube with it, narrowly avoiding dropping it, deposited it into his drink, and then did so a second time, putting the little tongs back on the sugar cube pile. "You're nervous."

"You know, normal people would phrase that as a question," John responded, stirring his tea with a cute little spoon. Rose raised her eyebrow again and him and he felt something crawl up and die in his chest. "Yes, I'm very nervous."

"Just so you know, it's not a personal thing. The _look_. I just am in that sort of headspace right now." Rose responded, crinkling her face up, removing some of its prior elegance. John felt his heart begin to beat again. "I promise, I'm not intentionally trying to use my feminine wiles to intimidate you."

"Well, even if it's not intentional it's still intimidating," John mumbled into his teacup.

"My eyes are currently affixed to 'dominant mode' and will be for the next couple of hours, I'm afraid. You might just have to avoid direct contact." Rose joked, chuckling. "You look nice, though. Very Strider-bait."

Coming from Rose, the compliment meant more to him than anyone else. Everything felt okay, all of a sudden. Maybe it was the tea hitting him - didn't tea blends have calming effects or something? John couldn't remember. Maybe it was just Rose's soft-yet-stern voice. He had never felt it with the timbre it had today. The person sitting at the opposite side of the tea table from him acted like Rose, and talked like Rose, but didn't sound like the Rose he knew, or look like the Rose he was used to. He didn't mind it, though. "Thanks. How could you guess?"

"Luck, I suppose." Rose snarkily replied. "Do you have any idea on what sort of paraphilia you'd be looking to explore? And while we're at it, I lied about the Lyft. I'll cover all of it."

"Um, I hadn't thought about it that much," John responded, suddenly thinking about it. Images of Rose tied up, or John tied up. Or handcuffed to a bed? He was starting to feel something in his gut that was pleasant, a feeling he had forgotten about since he started his job, but his inexperience prevented any of those images to blossom.

"You appear to just have." Rose joked, finishing her tea silently. John had tried, but a couple of slurps throughout the conversation made him feel like he was less-than-stellar at it. Like it was some kind of art that had to be practiced - and yet, not a single bit of Rose's lipstick was out of place. It might as well have been magical. 

"Is not doing anything an option?" He asked as Kanaya appeared from out of nowhere, scooping up the used dishes faster than John could turn his head to see her expression. She was moving awfully quick, though. 

"Of course. Nobody can force you to do anything that you don't want to do." Rose said, smiling with her lips shut. An expression that might've seemed strained on anyone else looked just fine on her, John thought. "And if they do, let me know, and I'll make sure the information is forwarded to the proper authorities, for the meting of punishment. The not-fun kind."

"There's a fun kind?" John asked, innocently. Rose giggled behind her hand, standing up from her chair, letting it scoot back. Kanaya arrived in a flash, supplying a soft, white winter coat across one of Rose's arms, and then helping it onto the other. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, and John saw Rose's hands attempt to palm something to her. But John was a magician at heart, and he was much better at sleight of hand than Rose was.

He saw the little remote control easily, although what it was for was beyond him. He simply didn't have the imagination to figure it out yet, but he'd chew on the issue. John got up too, at Rose's silent urging, and was handed a jacket that, surprisingly, fit him just fine. Warm and comfy. Unlike with Rose, it was pressed into his arms, so that Kanaya could hurriedly push the chairs back underneath the table and disappear into the door-gated room nearby, slamming the door. Rose tsk'd. "There's a fun kind of most things, John Egbert, you'll find. Let's get rolling, as the kids these days say." She announced, leading John forward on what felt like an invisible leash to the elevator. As it opened and swallowed them, beginning to roll downwards, he had an answer for her.

"I think... I'd be up to try most things? At least once."


	4. The Party: Part 1

The drive was moderately uneventful. The distance to their finale locale wasn't insurmountable by foot, but it would've been an hour and a half or so of walking, and, from Rose's way of wording things, pass through some places they'd rather not be walking at night. The building was a large, disused music hall, apparently bought out by Red Miles's previous owners and supremely renovated, somewhere between the urban sprawl and suburbia, close enough that the busses could bring you here, but far enough away that no homeowner's associations could bother them. John had never heard of this place before, but it was apparently one of the more well-known landmarks of the city, spoken, of course, in hush-hush tones amongst adults so that the kids couldn't hear.

They flit through in the silence, while the radio hum of the Lyft driver gently swirled like a disused snowflake in the car's interior. John couldn't help but continue to glance over at Rose, while Rose wistfully stared out the window, occasionally fiddling with her phone. The casual way she seemed to enjoy her ride was both calming and distressing at the same time, and once they had arrived, John had realized that he had just begun staring outright. Rose gave him a giddy little smile, bouncing up and down in her seat for a second as she unbuckled her seatbelt, John doing the same. They left the car just slightly simultaneously. A couple of people were hanging around outside, some of them smoking, the others chatting. In turn, Rose came up to each of them and gave them a little hug and kiss on the cheek, introducing John as she went. It tended to go something like this:

"This is my good friend, John. John, this is _[name]_."

"Hi! It's a pleasure to meet you! I'm _[name]_ "

"Uh, hi! I'm John, as you, uh, may have guessed. It's my first time here."

"Well, I hope you have fun!"

Only a couple of people from the outside stood out to him enough to recite their names to memory, languishing over them in his brain like he was repeating a cheat code for a PS2 game. A short woman with long, curly hair named Aradia and her date, Equius, a man who reminded John strikingly of Nicholas Cage, but somehow in a bad way, stood out to him the most. Nothing about their dresses remained in his brain once he stepped past the threshold, but their faces remained, Aradia's narrow features and round face, and Equius's visible dark circles on a rigid, noticeably restrained face, like he was always tensing. Aradia was nice, and Equius sounded like he had a stick in his ass. A blonde girl smoking a cigarette seemed to linger her hug with Rose maybe a little too long for John's comfort, and he quickly learned her name was Vriska, her sharp, almost bony features impressed into his head. Those three made the biggest first impressions.

John did as he always did when he entered a new place, and began almost compulsively scanning the room, taking it in, committing it to memory as hard as possible. First floor, a lobby, where people in outfits both normal, fancy, and outlandishly sexual all lingered and talked. He couldn't get an exact headcount, but it was definitely more than 60 people in the lobby alone. Rose was probably telling him something, but he was zoning out. At one table, someone was presenting rows and rows of candles, on another, various kinds of objects that John wasn't too stupid to guess were probably for hitting and striking, considering their long, narrow shape. And food! That made John smile. Food was always a place of comfort for him.

"John!" Rose said, shaking his wrist a little and snapping him back to the real world. "Your card?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. My bad. It's here." John responded, pulling his phone out of his pocket and retrieving the laminated card from his case.

"He knows that no cell phones are ameowed outside of the pawby, right, Rose?" The lady at the front desk said, a woman with, well... John didn't want to be crass, and nor did the narrator partially sharing John's viewpoint, but safe to say that her proportions were far more generous than John was used to seeing on any of the three friends he actually hung out with. She certainly filled out her olive green sweater nicely, her wavy brown hair tied back in a professional looking bun, a hearing aid clipped to her ear. Oh, was she cat punning at him? He had to think of a response, as Rose repeated the instructions to him.

"Oh, I may have forgotten to mention that. Your cell phone isn't allowed out except in the lobby, and no photogra-"

"Oh, of course. No purrmission for cell phones." John replied, grinning like an idiot, emphasizing his words carefully. "Nefur gonna see me with mine me-owt."

The woman at the front desk made a strained expression and it slowly morphed into an amazed grin. "Please never stop purringing him, Rose." She chirped, sighing wistfully as she scanned the barcode at the back of John's card and then returned it to him. He gave her a little appreciative wave and returned the whole phone-card assemblage to his pocket, where it snugly fit in his leg, and Rose walked the two of them past the turnstile into the lobby proper.

"Well, it seems you've impressed Meulin already. That'll take you quite far." Rose joked, pointing out the ornate wooden staircase plopped right in the center of the lobby. There was something nearly undetectable in her voice. For a second John thought it might've been sadness, but he waved the thought away. "Above us is the main ballroom, which is where the bulk of the play goes on. Past the stairwell - you can't see it from here, but the hallways continue past it-, we have the Little's area, and the Aftercare room. Bathrooms are interspersed throughout the building."

"I'm glad you're giving me the verbal tour, Rose, but I don't know what a Little or Aftercare is." John helpfully pointed out as Rose kept them moving slowly through the morass of the crowd.

"I know, John, we'll get you on the up-and-up eventually. Also on the second floor is one of two rigging rooms, for ropes. On the third floor is a mat room, for wrestling and Primal play, along with the second rope area, and the Queen's office." Rose explained, leading John to a nearby elevator fit snugly near the stairwell.

"The Queen?" John asked, as they stepped into the elevator with two other unremarkable people.

"The Queen, yes. She and her husband own this building. She might be busy with Jack right now, but it's early in the night, and I'd like you to meet her as soon as possible, so you can properly thank her for her gift." Rose answered, causing John to immediately begin breaking out in sweat.

"Her gift that you gave me." John pointed out, perhaps less helpfully.

"I did tell you that I was friends with the club's proprietor, and that this was a gift from her." Rose repeated, and John felt an annoying sense of deja vu hit the back of his head like a fly-swatter.

"Um... Alright. Is there any, like, royal protocol so I don't screw up?" John asked. The two other people got off on the second floor, and the elevator continued its upward ascent.

"If you don't know her, she prefers to be called 'Sir'. I know the gender dynamics at play might be a little confusing, but the world isn't going to end if you mess up." Rose told him, one hand on her hip. When the elevator door opened, she let go of his wrist and walked out, looking down at her hand as if she forgot she was leading him by the hand. A straight shot into a hallway, with one large room on one side, and the other on the other, and the ornate office doors in the center. John felt his heart beating like crazy in his chest as he followed behind Rose silently, so glad he decided to wear the extra strength deodorant. Before Rose knocked on the door, she turned to John, reaching out to gently grab his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I probably seem really tense and weird right now, and that's probably not helping your comfort."

John chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his head as he slumped into the wall. "Really? How could you tell that I'm uncomfortable?" He asked semi-sarcastically. "Really. I'll be fine."

"John." Rose declared, and then pulled him into a tight hug. He squeaked in stunned silence for a single solitary second before wrapping his arms back around her. "I'm sorry. I have a lot of respect for Mistress Elizabeth -" She said, jerking a shoulder towards the closed office doors so John knew who she was talking about "- and I want her to know that the favors I traded in won't go wasted. But, more importantly, I want her to meet  _you_. Because you're charming and funny and kind of a dork but in, really, the best possible way and Vriska has been blowing up my phone asking about you for the past 10 minutes so you already have another fan. Nobody does the cat puns with Meulin anymore except her cousin and her boyfriend, and I can tell she really enjoyed it, and if you have who is, essentially, the most respected person in this entire building on your side the way you got those two, I know everything about this is going to be just peachy keen, as your Crocker side is apt to describe things." Rose explained, before finally letting go of John, releasing him from the death grip of her hug.

"Really, if you boil this down to its most basic components, I just want to make sure everything goes smoothly." Rose finished, grabbing both of John's hands with hers. He could feel her sincerity like oxygen in the wind, radiating off of her in waves like psychometric auras. In any other situation, her rambling might've seemed overwrought, perhaps silly, maybe even melodramatic, but John could feel the weight on both of them. John was here to have fun, and Rose had put the responsibility for his enjoyment on her shoulders. Letting her down at this point would be unconscionable. The worst that could happen was an awkward meeting, and then maybe he'd meet with this Vriska girl, or have Rose show him around more closely, or something. 

A part of him still felt that this was all a bit silly.

This wasn't going to cure anything.

But he'd give it a shot.

"Alright. Let's go." John said, pulling his hand away from Rose and knocking on the door twice, sharply, before she had the chance to do anything.


	5. Audience with the Black Queen

John had never seen Rose look more fearful than in that moment, as the office door creaked open, revealing a scar-faced man coated in a fine layer of brownish-grey stubble. He stared at John, his nostrils flaring, and then looked over to Rose. "Come in, Lalonde. Bring the new kid in." He said, not even addressing John as if he was there. He disappeared behind the office door, and Rose gave John a look that was evenly divided between terror and frustration. John picked it up, of course, he wasn't an idiot, but he kept on his normal dopey smile, or at least the one he's been able to manage for the past couple of months. John reached out to grab the door handle, but Rose gently pushed his hand away and grabbed the handle herself, pushing it open. No words needed to be exchanged.

When Rose turned around immediately to close the door, she was stopped by a low, humming, almost growling voice. "Let the boy in, Rose. We'll address you all at once." The lady further in the room said, outside of John's vision. Rose turned to John through the crack in the door and beckoned him with a crooked finger. John almost bounced as he walked, full of nervous energy, and when he slipped into the room, Rose shut the heavy wooden door behind him.

John's eyes immediately widened to take in the room, just as his nostrils were punched in the face by the potent mix of cigar and cigarette smoke. A tarp had been set out over an ornate, expensive looking carpet, with matching ornate, expensive looking wooden furniture, carved wooden table set at the other end of the room with a large leather chair in dark red pushed into it, and a narrow woman occupying that space. A heavyset man sat in a sofa set against the rightmost edge of the room, one of those stand doohickeys with the extendable legs propping up a laptop that he was tapping away at. A lavishly painted portrait of the narrow woman and heavyset man sat at the center-back of the furthest wall, and the scruffy looking guy that had... "Welcomed" him was kneeling on a stool, ceaselessly flicking a butterfly knife.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Egbert." The woman at the back said, steepling her fingers together before John interrupted her.

"Yes, Sir!" He almost yelled, bowing at the waist and then back up. Her face twitched with tension and Rose looked mortified before the other woman burst into laughter.

"Oh, has Rose been 'hyping up' this meeting to you? You seem tense." The woman that he knew as the Queen spoke, taking her hat off and setting it on her table, allowing the ample light in the room to begin casting on her properly. She was in a well-fitted suit that accentuated her shoulders, a cigarette holder pinched between her index and middle finger on her left hand, and a simple gold ring set on the ring finger of her right. Her otherwise all-black ensemble was emphasized with tiny, striking details and accents of neon green, particularly her tie. Her eyes even shared the color, but to a lesser extent. "Relax. I'm not going to bite your head off yet."

"But Jack might." The man on the couch said under his breath, chuckling without looking up at anyone. He was dressed similarly to the Queen - a well-tailored suit, with green accents. John's eyes flicked to "Jack", who looked similar, but a little more unkempt and without his jacket. Several dozen cuts were visible in his undershirt, several of which seemed to be fresh judging by the redness of the bloodstains. John immediately felt uncomfortable.

"Jack, jacket on." The woman said. From anyone else it should've been a bark to command that level of obedience, but Jack stiffened up, stopped playing with his knife, and found his jacket, loosely throwing it on to hide the worst of his injuries. "My name is Elizabeth. If you need to use it, you can call me Sir Elizabeth. I'm the owner of this establishment." She introduced, gesturing her left hand towards the man on his laptop. "This is my husband, Franz. He's mostly here for moral support." She said, and the man barely even tossed the lightest equivalent of a wave to John. "And the other man is my toy, Jack. Rose, why don't you introduce us to your friend?"

"This is my best friend, John," Rose said, flourishing her hand like she was showing off a car. Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.

"I thought Kanaya was your best friend?" She asked. John saw Rose's other hand fidget behind her back.

"Kanaya is my girlfriend. John is my best friend." Rose clarified. 

"Mm. Interesting." Elizabeth replied. The mood in the room was impossible to read - John couldn't tell if Rose had said the wrong answer, or something else was causing the tense silence. Her expression was only in her eyebrows, every other part of Elizabeth's face perfectly under her own control. "Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, John." She said. It clearly wasn't a question, but thankfully, John had been preparing for something like this.

"Well, uh, I work as a Tier II helpdesk at Skaianet. And I play a lot of Super Smash Brothers, and I like magic tricks and Nicholas Cage movies." He said, rattling off his preprepared list and drawing a dubious glance from Jack at the mention of Nicholas Cage movies.

"You do magic, hmm? Why don't you show us a trick? Do we need a deck of cards?" Elizabeth asked, eliciting a head-shaking reaction from John.

"I, erm, try not to leave my apartment without being properly equipped," John responded, pulling his deck of cards out from his pocket. His very first one, in fact, cards beginning to yellow with age, deck sleeve almost falling apart. "Can I, uh, approach you?"

"Certainly," Elizabeth responded, sucking smoke out from her cigarette, exhaling sharply, and then putting it out near her ashtray. John took a couple of steps forward onto the tarp, and then further, feeling like he was between a bear, a wolf, and a serpent, all ready to attack at any time. When he began to lean down, Elizabeth reached out to sweep some stuff off to the side of her table, giving him an empty space while he shuffled.

"So, um, I'm gonna fan some cards out, and then I want you to pick one." He said, having already prepared to force the Queen of Spades. He felt that it would be appropriate, considering the context, that maybe a little impressing could lighten the mood. Of course, I can't reveal all a magician's secrets to you, so suffice to say, she ended up picking the Queen of Spades, even though it seemed like a free selection. "And don't show me it. I'll shut my eyes, and you can show everyone else if you want." John said, proceeding to do just that as he took his glasses off while she showed the rest of the room.

"Alright. I'm ready for the next step, John." She said, so he put his glasses back on. Something about being called by his first name so often by other people was starting to grate on him in a nervous way.

"So, I'm gonna riffle through this deck, and you can say stop whenever you want, and put your card back in. Then, uh, we'll shuffle the deck so it's thoroughly mixed in, and then perform a miraculous appearance. But I'm getting ahead of myself." John said, proceeding to hold up the deck, beginning to allow it to fall from one hand into the other.

"Stop." She said, just as he was about to run out of cards to riffle through. He held the deck open, let her put the card back in, and then turned around at a stunned Rose.

"Uh, mind if Rose helps out with this, Sir?" John asked, turning back to Elizabeth.

"Of course. You heard the boy, Rose." She said. It sounded like a taunt coming out of her mouth, but John didn't know their history. Maybe this was just how they interacted with each other. Rose walked up so that she and John were side by side, and John passed the deck to her. He needed to, in order to palm the card off from its position. Nobody in the room knew it, but he already had the card ready, and was mostly using Rose as a distraction so that nobody would notice.

God, he hoped nobody noticed. "John, I've never shuffled a deck of cards before." She stated plainly, staring at the yellowed deck.

"It's just like tarot. You like tarot, right?" John guessed. She shook her head, and Elizabeth's face distorted into a grimace of amusement. "Well, just cut it a couple of times and try to make sure it's pretty thoroughly mixed. You can shuffle it too, if you'd like, Sir Elizabeth."

"Uh, okay." Rose murmured, beginning to awkwardly mash the deck together, pulling it apart, and repeating. No, she wasn't very good at shuffling, but that didn't matter.

"I'll take my turn when Rose's is finished," Elizabeth said. John nodded, and Rose passed the deck across to her. "If I counted this deck, I suppose I'd likely find a card or two missing, wouldn't I?"

John saw at the corner of his eye all the blood immediately drain from Rose's face. Oh, ye of little faith. The only time John was good at lying was times like these. "Of course not. I would even offer to count them in front of you, but that would require trusting a magician."

"Mm... No, I trust you." Elizabeth responded, beginning to shuffle, somewhere in between the competence levels of John and Rose.

"You probably shouldn't," John said, and if it was possible for the already pale Rose to get any paler, she would've. The look she shot him could've melted iron, but he was too focused on this trick to care. "Sir. Sorry." He concluded, as Elizabeth passed him back the deck. Slipping the card back on top, he spread the deck out in a straight line. "If you've ever met a magician before, you should know not to trust his hands. I could've easily, and at any minute, palmed a card off from this deck and put it back on just now, like a bank loan. But I have two people, one on each side, that could've each seen me palm something."

"Jack, Franz, did the boy palm a card?" Elizabeth almost immediately asked. They both responded in the negative. "Very well. I am thoroughly prepared to be shocked and amazed." Of course, he palmed the card. He was just better at sleight of hand than everyone else in the room. John flipped the first card over, revealing a King of Spades.

"Is this your card?" John asked, prompting a quirked eyebrow from Elizabeth.

"No." She said. Rose looked like she was about to pass out right then and there.

"Oh, my apologies," John said, reaching for the second one, and flipping it over to reveal the Queen of Spades. Elizabeth seemed unimpressed. "I figured that it was a good idea to keep the Queen and the King paired, you know..." John said, and then flipped over the third card, revealing the Jack of Spades, and the next, a Joker. "And keep them both close to the Queen's toy, of course." She clapped her hands together.

"Quite impressive, but you still seemed to have messed up. How can I be so sure that you're not just playing up a mistake?" Elizabeth asked, her eyes glaring through him.

"Oh, well, this was all mostly pretense." John said, tapping Rose on the hand. "There's been a card in your dress strap for the past two minutes, Rose, do you mind putting it out on the table?"

That got everyone's attention.

Jack, who had been almost dozing, was now looking over with intrigue, and Franz had stopped typing to listen. Rose reached back, her hand shaking as she grabbed a card from inside the strap of her dress, dropping the Queen of Spades on the table. It matched the rest of the deck perfectly, yellowing and all. "I did claim miraculous appearances. Um, Sir Elizabeth, would you mind lifting up your hat?" John asked.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and lifted her hat up from the table to reveal a face-up Queen of Spades, breaking out into a smirk.

"And, um, Mr. Franz, could you lift up your laptop?" John asked.

Franz shut his laptop instead, setting it down onto the couch, to reveal the third Queen of Spades. Finally, Rose had begun to breathe normally again. "What the fuck?" He heard Jack mutter, while Franz showed off a tight-lipped smile.

"And, um, finally, would you mind lifting up your ashtray, Sir Elizabeth?" John asked. Nobody in the room had noticed that the ashtray was raised slightly, and there didn't seem to be any reasonable explanation for how a folded up Queen of Spades was there, but there it was nonetheless, crease and all, although this one was noticeably newer than the others. The silence was louder than a nuclear bomb against everyone's eardrums, as Elizabeth gathered up the four Queens and stacked them on top of the deck. Then, she began to clap. Slow, rhythmic, and loud, but clapping nonetheless. John bowed, returning the deck to his pocket, and the extra cards to his extra, hidden pockets.

"I suppose you aren't allowed to tell me how you did that, Mr. Magician?" Elizabeth asked. "I had to admit, I was dubious until you had the Queens appearing everywhere they shouldn't have been."

"I can't in good faith, apologies, Sir." John said, tapping Rose's hand a couple of times. In a couple of seconds, she got the message, bowing to Elizabeth. Jack was grinning like a hungry shark, and Franz's smile was wider, but still shut-lipped. "And, um, I figured it would be appropriate to thank you for your membership gift, Sir." John finished, coming up from his bow, Rose following shortly after.

"Of course. You're quite welcome, and now that I've met you, I'm certain that Rose and I made the right decision regarding you." Elizabeth said, causing Rose to slump and exhale, until the tiniest glance from Elizabeth made her immediately stiffen back up again. "You're free to go enjoy the party. It's been a pleasure, Mr. Magician."

"Yes, Sir. I appreciate it." John responded, giving her a smile and a dopey wave before Rose led him out of the office. When the door shut behind them, she found the nearest wall and slumped down to her butt on it. "I think that went pretty well."

"I don't think I've ever edged that hard in my life," Rose said, clearly intending it to be some kind of joke by how she laughed nervously. John knelt down next to her, before flopping into a sit.

"I don't know what that means, Rose." John helpfully stated.

"Let's just say, like a proper action movie protagonist, you narrowly avoided disaster about 15 separate times during that entire conversation." Rose explained, taking a minute to begin catching her breath and letting the color return to her face.

"I like to think I have a knack for that."


	6. Aradia & Equius: Part 1

"So, John, right? Just to make sure I still got it right." The shorter woman said, walking down the stairwell with John. Rose had given him a little further tour, and in the process, he had bumped into Aradia again, without Equius, and gotten off to a conversation. In his opinion, that was the only good way to make friends. Rose had met back up with Vriska, and after giving him a confidence-boosting peck on the cheek, she had split from John to go play in the bondage room on the third floor. C'est la vie, now he had his own people to hang out with!

"Yeah! And your name's Aradia." John said, walking into the main ballroom with her. "And your boyfriend's Equius. And you guys like..."

"Sadism and masochism," Aradia answered again, giving him a friendly smile. She was dressed in a long skirt that hung down to her knees, and a maroon polo shirt, carting around a golf bag that made an occasional rattling sound as she walked. "And sometimes I financially dominate him but that's neither here nor there."

The main ballroom was dimly lit, and filled with equipment. John noticed X-shaped structures spread evenly throughout, in different colors - black, red, purple, blue - made of shiny wood. According to Rose, they had gotten here "early in the night", so nobody was playing, just setting up to play. On the rightmost wall, massage tables penned in a couple of people preparing equipment: the "house tops". All matter of various other structures were set about, such as L-shaped, padded benches made for kneeling on, a pillory (how medieval!), and a "flogging post" where people could get chained up by their wrists and ankles. It was that last one that Aradia's date was waiting at, looking surly and professional as he enjoyed the dark industrial music pumped through the speaker system.

"Also, he's not really my boyfriend. We just play frequently, and sometimes have sex." Aradia said, matter-of-factly, grinning mischievously at John. He wasn't sure if Aradia was somehow trying to subtly proposition him or if she was just being expository, but he just nodded along. "Do you like to read, John?"

"Like, books?"

"Yeah, like books! Do you read books?"

"Not really. I haven't had a lot of time for them, but I used to a lot."

"That's a shame! After we're done with this, remind me to recommend you some!" Aradia replied cheerfully, her dress shoes tapping on the laminated hardwood floor as she brought Equius over to John. Equius was dressed much more professionally than Aradia, almost like a butler, with a navy blue bowtie sitting on a white undershirt, a belt keeping black dress pants pinned to his waist. John barely came up to his chest, he had to be at least a foot taller than John, if not more, and Aradia just nearly seemed to come up to his abdomen, while John was precisely at armpit-height. Equius reached down to shake John's hand, and John grabbed his sweaty palm with somewhat nervous fervor, trying to avoid getting his hand crushed. "So, Equius, this is John, Rose's guest, and John, this is Equius, my paintoy!"

John had to laugh a little at the sentence, and Aradia laughed with him. Maybe even before he had started. Equius cracked his shoulders by rolling them backward. "It's a pleasure to meet you, John. Will you be observing Aradia's doubtlessly masterful performance?" He asked. His voice was smooth and low, although with a noticeable high, whistly tone to it. 

"Yeah! Might let him take a couple of swats if he wants." Aradia spoke, before John could.

"Are you sure?" John asked, fidgeting with his fingers.

"Of course! Equius's a big boy, he can take it. Plus, I'm definitely stronger than you are!" Aradia responded, flexing her arm, her biceps bulging out as they emerged from under her short sleeves. "I could absolutely bench press you!" John resisted the urge to reach out and poke her arms. "Alright, can you stand back? I really don't want you to stay in my whipping reach." She asked politely, pushing at the air in front of John as she unraveled her bullwhip, letting it flop onto the floor.

"Yeah, no problem," John said, walking backward until he had backed up into the nearest wall. While Aradia got in position, Equius pulled off his bowtie, set it down on a nearby fold-out chair, and began unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it off and folding it politely before putting it on the chair. Holy hell, he was  _ripped_ \- John couldn't avoid staring at Equius's bodybuilder-like-figure, even as he strapped himself into the whipping post.

_**CRAK!** _

John jumped at the sudden noise, while Aradia stared at her whip with an almost vacant smile. Nobody had gotten hit yet, Aradia was just scoping out her reach, twirling the whip in circles.  _ **CRAK! CRAK! CRAK!**_ The tip of the bullwhip snapped like a machine gun as she stretched her new limb out as far as it could go, filling the room with noise. John even noticed a couple of people stopping what they were doing, turning around to watch, as Equius turned away from Aradia, presenting his back to her, pressing his face into the wooden post. 

John couldn't avoid gasping a little - Equius's back was riddled with scars and bruises, most of them looking like the kind of marks you'd get from, uh, getting whipped. Seeing the physical reminder of injury made John suddenly somewhat uncomfor _ **CRAK**_ _ **!**_ as his train of thought was interrupted by Aradia's whip making contact with Equius's back. John could only really assume as such, though. He never saw the actual contact, but a second after the sound, a welt began forming, like he had been struck by something invisible.  _ **CRAK**_ _ **!**_  rang out, and even though he was watching this time, not lost in his thoughts, he still couldn't see anything outside of Aradia's arm moving, her free hand retrieving the end of the whip. It looked like it started moving and then teleported back into her grasp, but the noise and the welts proved motion.

Watching Aradia work was some kind of beauty by itself, as her whipping grew faster but remained steadily controlled. Not a single bit of her body seemed out of place, her limbs flying like jet fighters in perfect alignment. Her muscles tensed up for quick blips of microseconds, flicking her whip towards Equius, the loud, gunshot-like crack, and then coiling up for the next strike, all in one fluid motion. Her brow was furrowed with concentration, and her omnipresent smile had shrunken into a thin, taut line of concentration. Even once the blows began coming in recognizable rhythm, John still jumped and cringed at every single one of them - part of him wanted to reach out and yell at her to stop. But he held his breath, sweat emerging in a line on his brow.

Every thunderous blow drew more attention from the sparse crowd, people talking to each other, presumably about Aradia's performance. Every hit caused Equius's body to shake and shudder, bucking forward, as he gripped the pole. John put his arms in his pocket and tried not to stand out, or look scared, but he wasn't comfortable. Slowly, Equius's head turned against the pole until he was facing sideways. His clenched eyes creaked open, and he made eye contact with John. What was a grimace of pain turned into a resolute, steady smile, even between blows, as if to say,  _Stop worrying about it. I'm fine. I can take it._

John relaxed into the wall a little. He just watched the show, as Equius turned his face back into the pole, almost jumping out of his skin once Aradia came up to him with a "John!". Carrying her bag in one hand, she beckoned John over, unzipping the bag and rummaging around in it. "Still wanna give him a thwack or two? Or ten?"

John tried to look anywhere but Aradia's face, or the toy bag. "I... don't know, is that okay?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, is everything alright?" Aradia asked, a warm smile on her face. It was like watching two people in one, the emotionless whipping machine, and happy-go-lucky Aradia, worlds apart.

John's voice got quieter as he spoke, barely coming up above the din of the music. "I'm not sure how I feel about hurting people. I saw Equius's back and it, um, made me kind of sad. Are you sure he actually likes it?" He asked, glancing over at the bruised beefcake, watching his many welts slowly turning into bruised spots where they intersected.

"Oh, absolutely. He's actually the one that approached me first, believe it or not!" Aradia replied, grinning. "He saw me practicing during volunteer hours and pretty much begged me to whip him. Nobody can make you do things you don't want to do."

"I don't know but volunteer hours are, but I guess I'll take your word for it," John said, sighing. He let out a little noise of surprise when Aradia pressed a thin leather paddle into his hand, about two inches wide or so, and maybe a foot long or so.

"Wanna come with me for a second?" Aradia asked, bending up from her toy bag and zipping it up. John nodded, and Aradia walked him over to Equius - despite the noise and music, he could hear her shoes  _clik-clak_ softly against the wood as clear as day. Equius wiggled when she touched his back, his entire body thrashing into her fingers. She ran them softly along his newest welts and bumps and bruises, causing him to start breathing heavily. "Hey there, big guy, you hanging on alright?"

"Of course, Aradia," Equius answered, grinning. From this close up it was easy for John to see that his teeth needed some work, but, well, that wasn't his place to say anything. "Why the sudden concern? Your performance was absolutely exemplary, as usual." Aradia tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned his head from the post. "Oh, hello, John. Were you worried about me?"

"A little bit, yeah." John said, feeling kind of foolish for even bringing it up.

"I can assure you, I possess both the mental and physical  _strength_ to handle even Aradia at her most exhilaratingly ferocious," Equius said, his grin getting wider, his face flushed. The thought of Aradia being "ferocious" felt strange to John, but whatever.

"So it's cool if I give you a couple of hits?" John asked, feeling the weight of the little slappy thing. It wasn't really heavy at all, and he could feel some kind of flexible core in it that let it bounce back and forth easily.

"Of course. I implore you to, in fact. As they say, 'Give it your best shot'." Equius said, turning his face back to the post. "And, if I may make a request, as long as you're comfortable; try to keep your strikes limited to my posterior. I prefer to keep my back for whip strikes and floggers, if that is acceptable."

"Hit you in the butt?" John clarified. Equius started to reply, but Aradia cut him off.

"Hit him in the butt!"


	7. Aradia & Equius: Part 2

A loud, ear-splitting crack rang through the main ballroom as John's hand launched forward, carrying with it the leather spanker that Aradia had gifted him, right into Equius's plush, bepantsed rump. John put all of his mangrit into the swing, holding the paddle with two hands like a baseball bat and pulling it through, leaving Equius writhing a little as he pressed himself against the wooden pole. "Oh, absolutely excellent-" Equius hissed, his face turned to the side so that he could keep an eye on John.

Aradia came up from behind John, spooking him - already, in that single instant, he had lost track of her in his mind, the rest of the world fading away. "Can I touch your arms, John?" She asked.

"Yeah, go ahead," John responded, his fingers shaking a little. She reached around him and gently grabbed his wrists, and already he could see exactly what Equius was talking about. Her forearms pressed against his, he could feel her muscles underneath a thin layer of fat, definitely the kind of person that could punch a hole in his head in a moment's notice should it come to that. She pulled one hand away from the paddle and put it down by John's side.

"It's not a baseball bat, although I have something like that in my bag if you want it. Think of it more like a ping-pong paddle. You want to make small motions with your wrist and hand, not big motions with your arm." Aradia instructed, bringing John's one hand in a position just at the edge of the slapper's range. She stepped him back a couple of steps, and then turned his body sideways so he wasn't facing Equius straight on, but could still see him. "For the most part, you want to hit someone with the very tip of your instrument. As far away as you can make it without missing. Don't be afraid to hit the air, too, you can't hurt it!"

John nodded, his throat dry and crackly. He was feeling very self-conscious all of a sudden, but Aradia lifted his left hand back, and when he dropped it, he had to follow through.

_**CRACK!** _

Flicking his wrist outwards, he sent the slapper through into Equius, carrying the shockwave into the much taller man, causing him to seize up and freeze completely. "You okay?" John asked nearly immediately, causing Equius to relax and slump into the pole, laughing. His eyes had a somewhat manic look to them, pupils dilated.

"Dearest Aradia, I believe that our new friend may match you in  _STRENGTH_!" Equius said, huffing and breathing heavily. His upper half was covered in sweat, and John, for some reason, had the most distinct feeling that Equius had a boner. There was just something about it in his voice. It was one of those very boner-iffic voices.

"Well, maybe if John likes this, we can see about making it a regular occurrence," Aradia replied, giving John's shoulders a quick squeeze before backing away. John's back suddenly felt very empty without a warm chest squished up against it, something he didn't realize was actually happening to him except when it rather suddenly was not. "Go ahead and swing 'til you're satisfied!"

_**CRACK!** _

_**CRACK!** _

_**CRACK!** _

Each blow brought with it an increased sense of ease, as John felt gears in his head turning, clicking into place. With his free hand, he adjusted his glasses onto his face, watching as Equius happily wiggled like a caterpillar at a rave. That felt nice. Seeing Equius grinning with his crooked teeth, eyes swimming, glazed over, made this go from unbearable to something that he could indulge his... Friend? His new acquaintances, let's call them, with. Ultimately, he was able to sustain twenty hammer blows on Equius's ass, all with banter interspersed, mostly Equius complementing John's physique, strength, and focus, while John was really just kind of avoiding talking.

He still wasn't 100% on this.

Let's call it 50/50.

With the toy out of John's hand and back in the bag, he stepped a couple of feet away while Aradia went and unshackled the sweaty and thoroughly beaten Equius from the whipping post. Equius slumped down, shaking his arms out a little as he did so, and Aradia pointed to John. "Mind grabbing the wet wipes over by the cleaning table?" She asked, and then moved her pointing finger towards a small table set up by the edge of the room with cleaning supplies, paper towels, and so on. "And the spray bottle, too?"

"Yeah, sure," John said, going to do as instructed while Aradia and Equius talked behind him. Once he was an appreciable distance away, their mumbled words faded into noise, and then into nothing, before he returned with the requested handful of stuff. Then, Aradia yanked Equius's pants down, grabbed a wet wipe, and began running it up and down Equius's rear.

When John saw it, he immediately felt nauseous. There was a big, noticeable bruise, right on the center, beginning to form even as Aradia wiped at it gingerly, and then used a different wet wipe to caress Equius's back. John deposited the cleaning equipment on the chair and turned away so he didn't have to keep looking, and there was two minutes of silence and muttering as Aradia did the rest of the cleaning, and then grabbed John by the shirt sleeve. "John, I can't force you to but I'm going to have to insist I take you to the aftercare room, okay?"

"Okay." John almost burped out, blearily. He felt like he was gonna hurl chunks right on the floor right there, even as Aradia lifted his arm up, put it around her shoulders, and got to walking, leading John along, with Equius slowly adding clothing back to his body in the meanwhile. The walk to the aftercare room was like a dream, with John dizzily attempting to not fall over onto his gracious host, having to take each step one at a time. It took them almost a minute to get down the stairs, and the hallway leading into a sound-padded, acoustically isolated back chunk of the music hall stretched on for miles and miles.

The aftercare room was a moderately large, intimate affair, with dim lights, no music, sectioned off by couches and cushions and tables. Already, a couple of couples were there, people who started playing early or were just hanging out. Out of the corner of his eye, John thought he saw someone wave at Aradia, and from his periphery, he could definitely see Aradia angrily - no - sternly wave them away. The beanbags suddenly pressed under his rear end felt like they were about to swallow him up as he was deposited onto a nest of beanbag chairs approximately a wall wide.

John didn't know what he looked like right now, but he was sure it was dumb and awful. His face felt pale, and his heart was up in his stomach, like the feeling you get when you get caught in something embarrassing and you keep trying to explain yourself but every sentence just makes yourself sound like more of a liar, even though you're telling the truth. It was those kinds of butterflies. The "I did something awful" kind of butterflies. He saw Equius in the corner of his vision, slowly approaching, and then Aradia fanning him away. "John, are you okay? Please be honest with me."

"Not really." John croaked, and then chuckled through his dry throat, as Aradia pulled out a metal water bottle, unscrewing the lid and positioning a plastic straw for John to take sips out of until his throat didn't feel so bad. It was ice cold going down into his stomach, and he could feel the water filtering out into him. She passed the water out of his vision and, John assumed, Equius took it.

"John, can I touch you? I think you need a hug." Aradia said, straight out, as John looked at her blearily, the kind of feverish gaze that someone with the flu gave their caretaker. John nodded, so Aradia slipped onto his beanbag and threw a hug around him, pulling him close. That was... Nice. It was nice and warm, and Aradia was strong, and John felt like he was melting.

"What's going on?" John asked, as Aradia began petting his hair back, from his forehead, down the top, to the back of his scalp. Someone passed a metal bottle over top of his vision and she stuffed it in her bag after capping it, throwing a thin blanket that had appeared outside of his periphery over John.

"If I had to give my best guess, you're having an anxiety attack. And probably top dropping at the same time." Aradia answered, which only really gave him 50% of the information, but he guessed he was probably gonna be exposited the rest soon.

"I don't know what dropping is but I think the first part's right," John asked, while Aradia continued petting his hair. He wiggled up a bit in the bean bag chair to put his head further into Aradia's hand, or she might've been pushing down harder, but either way, it was making him feel calmer. He tried to recall the symptoms of an anxiety attack, but nothing was coming to mind except a sense of impending doom, so, got that one squared away. "Is Equius okay?"

"Of course, John. Equius is right here. Do you want him to hold your hand?" Aradia asked, and John suddenly realized that she had been whispering the entire time. Whisper-speaking, more. John's body wanted to say yes but his brain was confused by the concept of holding hands with guys, or holding hands with the person he just hurt, or, most likely, a mixture of both.

"I don't know. Are you okay, Equius?" John asked, quietly, barely turning his head.

"Perfectly exquisite, John." Equius answered, giving John a gentle pat on the head. 

"Basically, your idea of social norms and conventions was just violated by you intentionally hitting another person," Aradia explained, her voice taking on an academic, lecture-y quality. "Your brain doesn't know what to do. Culturally, you're not supposed to hit people. Internally, you might have liked it a little. You might not've. But physically, you hit someone, and your brain is upset." She quietly spoke, John's brain soaking up the new information, adding it to his ongoing attack. "Plus, all that adrenaline and dopamine, if you were enjoying it, just suddenly left your system. You probably feel like shit and I'm so, so sorry because I should've thought about it more before asking you to hit Equius."

John's eyes sort of met Aradia's. She looked full of concern. John noticed a hand on his chest, feeling his pulse, and then took stock of just how hard his heart was hammering in his chest. "I think it felt okay, until I saw Equius's bruise. Is Equius gonna be okay?"

"Oh, John..." Aradia almost whimpered, pulling John into a big hug. He wasn't going to pretend that being squished into her shoulder wasn't unpleasant, but his arms were just being limp by his side. "You're _such_ a sweetheart. Equius is a big boy, and he's taken a lot worse. What you did was pretty much our warmup." She began to squirm a little when John's face drooped.

"So... I interrupted your... thing?" John sounded heartbroken. Crestfallen, even, so Aradia laid down next to him and squeezed him a little harder.

"No, no no no no, John. I stopped it because you didn't seem super comfortable and I wanted to wait until you were back with Rose or not watching when we got into the heavier stuff. I promise you didn't interrupt or ruin anything. Not a single thing." Aradia assured him, gently running her fingers through his messy hair. Equius gave him another pat, this time on the shoulder, gentle as could be.

"Okay." John responded, a little blankly, from under the blanket. "Now what?"

"Now, we're gonna stay here until you feel better."


	8. After-Aftercare

"John? John? Are you hearing me okay?"

John recognized that voice. It was a distinctive, humming kind of voice, the kind that curled around your ears before entering, sort of like water into a funnel. It was the voice that you could tell was generally coming from the smartest person in the room, that kind of voice. Oh, that meant it was probably Rose. When John opened his eyes, his suspicions were confirmed, a small crowd of people sitting in front of him. It seems that he's fallen asleep in a beanbag chair, lulled by soft petting of his hair that, looking back, he misses immensely. 

Alright, now that he's awake, he stretches and yawns and mumbles something like "Yeah, 'mwake,", trying not to bonk the Aradia next to him, or the Rose in front of him, or the Equius somewhere in the distance talking to a shorter person he doesn't recognize. As his eyes creak open, he adjusts his glasses, catching sight of Elizabeth just peeking her head into the door and then disappearing around the corner, before Rose waves in front of John's face.

"This is mission control to Mr. John E. Are you doing alright? Do you need anything?" Rose asked. It sounded dismissive, maybe even condescending, but John knew Rose for years, and he knew what "concern" sounded like coming out of her throat.

"Water, please." John croaked, a small paper cup pressed into his hands almost immediately, which he gulped down with both gusto and abandon. The best water cooler water he's had in his entire life, without a doubt. A small plastic hand reaches out for him but Rose gently pushes it away. "I think I'm fine. How long was I out?"

"Maybe twenty minutes." The girl to Rose's right answers. She smells like cigarette smoke, but only faintly, like it was a light misting of some kind of deodorant spray. Eau de Vriska, now in cigarette flavor. John tried really hard to avoid making a face at it. Oh yeah, that was her name, Vriska! "We got the full scoop from Aradia. Not dying on us yet, kid?"

"Be polite, Vriska, John's actually a couple of months older than you." Rose responded, enticing Vriska to stand up and stretch her back, cracking all of her spine in a wonderful chorus.

"Whatever." She dismissed. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," John answered, getting up from his lying down position in the bean bag chair. He was covered in a thin layer of vague sweat, neatly folding the blanket that was on top of him and giving it to Aradia, thinking it was hers. Then, she put it in a laundry basket in the corner, as people cleared out from around John, knees un-bending, height returning while he stood up. Rose gave him a quick hug before letting go. "Um... What now? Should I go?"

Aradia looked at Rose, who looked at Aradia, who looked at Equius, who was busy talking to someone else, and then she looked at Vriska, who was quickly walking out of the room, and then back at Rose, and then they both looked at John simultaneously. "Do you... want to go?" She asked.

"Not really. Is the party over?" John asked.

"No, it's about 9:30. You still have another three-and-a-half-hours before the party is ended." Rose explained. John shrugged and sat down on one of the couches, rolling his arms, twisting his body a little, cracking joints left to stiffen in his tiny nap.

"Cool. I think I'm just going to stay here for a little bit, and then get back at it? Is that allowed?" John asked, slumping into the couch. He pulled out his deck of cards and began idly shuffling it, and Rose looked out the door and then back to John.

"Yeah, of course, it's okay! Do you want me or Rose to stay here with you?" Aradia asked, one hand sort of loosely pressed to her hip and the other hanging down. Equius finished talking to the person he was talking to, and came back over to stand silently by Aradia's side, like some kind of guardian golem ready to cave a hole into any threats. Rose looked at her feet, and that was weird - seeing her seem almost ashamed of something. John didn't think shame was an emotion Rose Lalonde could feel until this very moment in time.

"I think I'm good. I'm just gonna chill for a bit and then get some food and then wander around." John replied, and Rose's eyes lit up a little. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of Blue Raspberry Gushers™, passing them into John's hand, while Equius reveals a small cupcake, passes it to Aradia, who gives it to John. "Oh, well, I guess that's solved!"

"I'd like to offer this to you as a token of apology for causing you undue stress and exhaustion." Equius said, a tiny voice coming from such a loud-looking man. John was confused, he didn't understand why everyone was treating him so nicely! And he didn't like cupcakes but he wasn't going to say that to Equius. He had more tact than that.

"I figured you might need some gushers. So I brought some, just in case they became necessary." Rose said, offering her side of the snack exchange. Already, John was unwrapping the cupcake wrapper, gently ripping it in half. It was chocolate, with white icing that his honed "my-dad-is-a-baker" nose told him was probably cream cheese flavor, and he passed one half to Aradia, who caught what he was going for and passed it back to Equius.

"Oh." Equius buzzed, staring at it like he was just given a small gold bar. By the time everyone was done looking at Equius, the other half had already disappeared into John's mouth, evidenced only by tiny little crumbs that he quickly wiped up with his fingers. When they looked back at John, Equius did the same.

And so an unbreakable bond of friendship was forged.

"Well, I think I'll be good just with a little arr and arr," John answered, grinning at the group gathered in front of him. "'Sat cool?"

"Perfectly fine," Rose replied, smiling right back. John had drawn more genuine smiles out of Rose today than he had seen from her in the entire past year, it was odd. "If that's all necessary, I suppose I'll be off, then?"

"Sure!" "Sure!" John and Aradia said in unison. Rose gave John a tiny little wave and turned around to walk off, poking her head back around the corner for a bigger, slightly more confident-seeming wave. John waved back, and then heard in the distance an "Oh, hello, Nepeta!"

"Well, if there's nothing else for us to help you with, will you be okay if Equius and I go do some other stuff?" Aradia asked, bending down on her knees a little so that she was closer to eye level with the sitting John.

"Yeah! You go do your stuff. I'll be here if you, uh, need me." John responded, popping open the bag of gushers. Like Nicholas Cage, he used to love them, and then hate them, but now he likes them again. Not the same kind of rapturous enjoyment that he had from them as a bright-eyed child, but they were sweet, and tasted good, and made him think about Ghostbusters, which was also good. Aradia bid him farewell, Equius did the same, and they both left John in the empty aftercare room.

It took maybe 10 minutes for someone to poke her head in. Bright, frizzy orange hair, with a dark blue beanie with little orange cat ears sewn on, on top of that whole hair arrangement. John was only paying enough attention to note her, even as her walking path put her closer and closer to being in direct contact with John, because he was busy shuffling his cards. And then, contact. "Um... Hi! Are mew John?" The girl asked, sitting down legs crossed in front of John. She was wearing a light olive tank top, and then a dark blue jacket on top of that, big enough that it was more like a blanket than a jacket, her sleeves rolled up to her wrists...

Wait, did she just cat pun at him?

"Is someone looking fur me, purrchance?" John replied, grinning. The girl's jaw hung open a little before she responded. In awe, probably. 

"I am! I was infurrmed that mew might be interested in playing...?" She asked, bouncing on her butt a little bit.

"Like, kink playing?" John asked back, receiving a vigorous nod in response. "Tail mew what, I'm still feeling a little out of it, but if mew can sit through a magic trick, we'll see how I'm feeling affurwards?"

"Sure! I'd love to see one!" She responded, her bouncing getting more energetic the more cat puns John let slip out of his mouth in a never-ending tide. "Oh, and my name's Nepeta, so mew know! Equius told me mew might be interested in playing!"

"Well, Nepeta, it's a pleasure to meet mew, and feel furee to offur him my thanks next time mew see him." John replied, fanning his freshly shuffled deck out. "Go ahead and pick one. And try not to show me!"


	9. Nepeta: Part 1

So that's about how John ended up face-down against a wrestling mat, both arms pinned behind his back by a girl about half a foot smaller than him, counting backward from ten. "Three... two... one! I win!" He could almost imagine the emoticons in her voice, her saccharine sweet tone, and his uncomfortable half-boner pressed into the mat. To call the situation unfathomable would've been simultaneously an understatement and yet also slightly incorrect. After all, Rose did promise he'd have a good time, he just didn't expect it to be... from being wrestled into the ground? John let out a loud breath, and Nepeta let go of his wrists, letting them flop to the mat below.

"So, was that fun for mew too?" Nepeta asked, lying down on the mat next to John, her arms held neatly behind her back while she turned her face to face him, her cheek also pressed against the surface. John felt a little twitch of satisfaction in the fact that she was a little red and sweaty, but he was far ruddier and sweatier.

"Can I think about it?" John asked, receiving a hyperactive nod in return. John was surprised when he got to talking with Nepeta, how lively and excitable she seemed, how interested she was in his newcomer status, something she had been told by Equius. But more surprising was how reticent she was to tell him all of the stuff she was interested in. He guessed it made sense, but it was a swing back around the metronome compared to how open Aradia and Equius were... Or seemed? Maybe the depths of their interests was far below the surface of what he saw as a pretty extreme precipice. But, no, all Nepeta was willing to tell him was that she liked to wrestle, and that there was more to know that she wasn't telling him.

"It's not stuff I like to do in public~" She teased, and that was that.

But did John have fun? That was really the important, all-encompassing question here. Did he have fun at them starting on their knees, grabbing each other by the shoulders, and quickly pressing each other into the ground? The way Nepeta's tank top started to ride up, the slightest slivers of skin from her stomach pressed against his own considerably fuzzier tummy when it rode up in kind? How she knew all those interesting locks and holds, and every time John thought he had her pinned, she could manage to wriggle out and force him back down to the floor? Did he have fun when she sat on his back, holding his arms and counting backward from ten?...

Did he have fun when, just before, she sat on his chest, legs locking his arms in place, coyly challenging him to get up, only to flip him over when he couldn't break her combined grip and calf strength?

This was really the all-encompassing question here. That little thrill of sensation that ran up his spine when she had him completely at her mercy, the warmth of her crotch hovering right against his shirt - was that fear? Arousal? And, dare it be asked... Fun?

Turning his eyes back towards her, he decided the answer was yes. "Yeah. I think that was fun!" He said, cracking a grin, and Nepeta wriggled around in her little planking position. Her jacket lay in the distance, along with her hat, only in an olive tank top and grey shorts, and John thought she looked quite good in the whole getup. Staring at her, it took him another five seconds of her catlike grin before he realized that, _oh no_ , he had a crush on her. God damnit. Nepeta reached out with one of her small hands and took John's into hers, running her thumb along the back of his knuckles, his breath slowly coming down from its high peak upon adrenaline mountain. Nepeta didn't say anything, John's eyes drifting shut until his breath was back.

They cracked open again when he heard the rustling of movement, Nepeta's hand gently pulling John up until they were both sitting, facing each other. John's legs were criss-crossed under each other, while Nepeta was sitting on her calves, bouncing slightly. Everything she did seemed to be done with a slight bounce to it, every motion, every breath, like she was incapable of slowing down for even a second. Despite her clear cat theming, John felt more of a shark vibe from her. This feeling in her aura that if she stopped moving, she'd die. Oh no, now you're being depressed again. Stop that. John shook his head a little, and snapped back to the real world.

"I'm really, really glad mew liked it!" Nepeta cheered, tilting her head just a touch. She let her hands rest on her thighs, fingers drumming along the exposed skin, thumbs fiddling with the fabric of her soccer shorts. "Do mew... wanna wrestle again?"

John didn't have to think about it for very long. Some kind of somewhat competitive spirit had been stoked - or, hmm. Maybe competitive wasn't the right word for it? He was feeding, feeding off of Nepeta's energy and enthusiasm, in the same way that a leech fed off of blood or a city fed off of a power plant. It colored everything about this in light olive, just like her eyes, this kind of happy attitude that he could, not to sound too hippie, really vibe with. Nepeta was happy, and John was happy because Nepeta was happy. John thought that maybe Nepeta could feel that too, and that she was getting happy because John was happy. An endless feedback loop, like they were getting caught in a banquet of nested recursive while statements, feasting off each other's code, with no end in sight.

John was jazzed up. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, glancing towards his glasses over with the rest of Nepeta's clothes. This close up, it wasn't a huge problem. She was blurry at the edges, but that was fine.

There didn't need to be more to the world right now.

It was just him, Nepeta, and the mat.

"Yeah. Black fur "stop and take me to aftercare", red fur "stop", yellow fur "slow down", green fur "we're good", right?" John recited, wanting to demonstrate his mastery of the basic protocols of safewords, something that Nepeta had taught him in broad strokes before they started their first match.

"Yeppers! That sounds right to me!" Nepeta purred with a smirk, letting her hands slide down from her thighs onto the mat. John adjusted his position to match, leaning into his knees, bent over, prepared to spring into action. "Ready? Set? Go!"

John sprung into action, immediately ducking down while Nepeta used the same opening move she did last time: springing right for John's chest. Instead, her head went over him, and he pushed forward off of his legs, catching Nepeta in the abs with his head and arms. Pushing her down onto her back was almost too easy like this, with John's face buried against her stomach while his larger size let him hold himself over her. He forced himself more forward, grabbing hold of Nepeta's shoulders, his fingers flush against freckled skin. His face perilously close to hers.

He could see the lion in her eyes. He was suddenly very self-conscious of the fact that he was between her open legs, and that their groins were nearly flush, and it was this moment of weakness that distracted him long enough for Nepeta to grab hold of his stomach and kick off of the mat, flipping him sideways. John dug his heels in as hard as he could, trying to use his mass to keep her from prying him onto his back yet again. They struggled against each other, each of them trying to push the other past this precipice of sideways motion, neither one willing to give an inch. Nepeta's superior technique and well-trained muscles compared to John's beginner's luck and slightly unhealthily high BMI. Somehow, the fact that John was even holding out this long was impressive. Both of them were breathing heavily, and John was putting up a much better fight than last time. His body strained and strained, muscles already filling with ache.

"John." Nepeta stated, plainly into the void, enough of a distraction for her to get another inch on him. He grit his teeth and bore back down, managing to shove her back, to reclaim that inch. "I'm going to be purrfectly honest with mew. I'm really,  _really_ turned on right meow." Her voice was low like she was whispering some kind of dark secret, or a forbidden incantation. Something nobody else in their small world could hear besides John and her.

Now that was just plum unfair. You can't tell an insecure depressed guy like John that and expect anything but his muscles slackening in shock, that critical moment of startlement that let her push him onto his back, this time, with her legs in between his. John was distressingly aware of his boner, and it really, really wasn't making him any less sweaty and anxious.

"Can I kiss mew?" She asked, and John didn't know what he was thinking when his mouth said "Yes please," without the rest of his brain's permission.


	10. Nepeta: Part 2

Sometimes, laying in bed, John liked to consider who his first kiss would eventually be with. Not considering random people, but those within his tiny friend group - the only other humans that were real to him - there was only one viable option. Jade was his cousin, so she was out, and Dave was a guy (A year from now, revisiting this line of thought, he would laugh), so the only person it could've been with was Rose. Nobody else on this Earth mattered to him as entities. The people at John's job passed by him like ghosts. He had a boss and he had coworkers and he sat in a cubicle and none of them registered as sentient beings. They were just non-player-characters that he said hello to when they said hello first.

It was when Nepeta pinned him down and asked, asked  _him_ , if he wanted to kiss, that he began to reconsider somewhat. Not only that his first kiss had to be with Rose, but that the only people that were real were his three friends. No, there was Nepeta and Meulin, and Aradia and Equius, and Vriska and Kanaya, and Elizabeth and Franz and Jack. He had been here for only a couple of short hours and already he had nine new people to file into his mental storage. Not just nine new shadow cutouts to learn the name of and respond in kind when pressed for a title, but 8 people with personalities and likes and dislikes and appearances and traits.

Already, his mind felt heavy with knowledge.

When she got close, he nodded as if to provide extra acknowledgment. Yes, kissing Nepeta would be fine. And having his first kiss be taken by a relative stranger at a kink party he was dragged to by the person he thought would be his first kiss due to a childish crush but, as it turned out, she was dating someone that she also met at one of these parties who was, presumably, kissing her far more often than John ever would? Don't dwell, John, dumbass, just kiss the girl.

John's eyes closed, and Nepeta's lips met his.

So, this was what the vaunted "kissing" was like?

Not bad. Not bad at all.

He was distracted, hopelessly distracted by the coiled firmness of her physique, pressing him into the ground with the force of her mouth and her arms. She was pinning him down, and he loved every second of it. All ten of them, spent stiff-skinned, mostly unmoving, unresponsive, like he had bluescreened mid-smooch. Nepeta rolled off of him with a playful "That's ten! Looks like I win again!", but all John wanted to do was stare at the white ceiling, letting the lights wash over him, missing the warmth of another body on top of his.

He lay there in awe for a little bit, the kind of old-fashioned awe typically reserved for religious experiences like seeing an angel or being talked to by a burning bush. Literally awesome. His chest gently heaved up and down as he breathed, the indistinct nature of the lights and the ceiling blurred together from his missing glasses affecting his eyesight, into a pure white mist that filled his periphery, until it was broken into by a cat-like interloper. "John? Are mew okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Just... Need a second." John replied through a mouthful of fog, slowly rolling up to his feet. This was as close as possible to the opposite feeling he had when he was striking Equius. To call it euphoria would be both overselling it and underselling it at the same time. A dozen dozen dozen dozen thoughts surged through his brain, like,  _she asked to kiss me?_ and  _was i good at kissing?_ and  _she felt really nice_ and  _oh shit i need to hide my boner_ and so on and so forth. He was stunned by the sheer volume of thoughts overwhelming him.

Then, Nepeta sat in between his legs and smiled at him and he felt like flopping back onto the floor again. She folded her arms politely into her criss-crossed legs and put her head on his shoulder and nuzzled into him in such a cat-like way that he was really more impressed with her dedication to her aesthetic than anything else. No, that wasn't true, he was definitely impressed by how much she was enjoying his presence, since he considered himself fundamentally unlikeable on a base level, that he was really just blown away by this whole experience. John, fun to be around? Really? Who could've seen that coming?

She even purred, a low, trilling sort of rumble while she pushed into him, her chest up against his, modest as it were. She was a far cry from Meulin down below bodily, a small enough chest that, hoo boy, she wasn't wearing anything underneath, and John could certainly feel it, two little pencil erasers pressed into him between two layers of cloth. She refrained from giving him a full body hug, but John could tell that this was a close enough approximation for someone like her that he wasn't even remotely offended at the lack of embracing. Her presence itself felt like enough of an embrace.

"Was I your furst kiss, John?" She asked, giving John access to a new emotional tone in his Nepeta-pallet. Shyness. She was being shy, even as she was rubbing her cheek into his shoulder and purring like an oversized, warm, nipple-y kitten, which was a comparison John was now immediately regretting making in his head. Instead, he just leaned against Nepeta's head while he thought of how to answer.

"Yeah, you were," John replied slowly and concisely, settling on honesty as his policy for the moment. Honesty and sincerity had gotten him pretty far tonight, magic tricks notwithstanding, so there was no reason to break that pattern when it wasn't leading him anywhere remotely astray. Nepeta was his first kiss, and those were the facts of the matter.

"Was I okay?" Nepeta asked, and if it was possible for John to get blown away further, wind sweeping his hair into elaborate, bird-shaped constructions, then it would be happening. John had spent the past five minutes after being kissed either staring at the ceiling on his back, or at Nepeta on his butt, and  _she_ was asking if  _she_ was the one doing okay? Preposterous. Absolutely bonkers.

"Mmhmm." John hummed, drawing a trill of delight out of Nepeta, only for it to be interrupted by his counterquestion. "Was, uh, was I?"

"Heehee-" Nepeta giggled, raising one hand to gently trace it along John's jaw, making him feel immediately and immensely flirted with. She cupped his chin, tilting his head down so that they could lock eyes, his Mr. Blue Sky blue to her catnip olive. "Mew have really purrfect lips... But your technique could use some purractice."

For some reason, this wasn't nearly as deflating as John thought it would be.

Especially not when it was followed up with an "I'd be willing to train mew after this party... I mean, at my place. Later. And only if mew wanted, of course"

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Kink is not a substitute for therapy. It is very fun for the right people but if you are depressed, please get help: from a professional, if possible!
> 
> All comments, kudos, bookmarks, and views are seen, noted, and greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ttmiyh)  
> [Tumblr](https://ttmiyh.tumblr.com)  
> [Homestuck Content Creation Station](https://discord.gg/ymB3spr) (come join us and hone your craft!)


End file.
